Evangelos Venizelos, the Greek Deputy Prime Minister, in an exclusive interview with the British newspaper Guardian talked about the summit in Cannes in November 2011 when Greece was nearly forced out of the eurozone.
“It was a meal where only four of the 14 participants spoke and nobody ate,” says the author in the first lines of the article. For Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy who were glaring at Venizelos and the then Prime Minister George Papandreou, the dinner had turned into a defining moment “that could make or break the eurozone.”
“In all my years I have never witnessed behavior so undiplomatic,” recalled Evangelos Venizelos. “The climate was extremely heavy, absolutely tragic. And very, very aggressive,” he conceded.
Papandreou’s decision to hold a referendum over the terms of the rescue program had outraged the two European leaders. “Sarkozy was extremely irritated,” said Venizelos. “Merkel was calmer but her message was clear: either you cancel the referendum or you hold one, immediately, that asks: ‘yes or no to the euro’. And after that we’ll see if we’ll go ahead with the [next] installment [of aid], the [rescue] program, the haircut.”
According to the newspaper, until now no one has talked publicly about that meeting except the former French finance minister, François Baroin, who had talked about a “psychological warfare.” Under the threat of bankruptcy, Papandreou was forced to abandon the idea of a referendum and became the first EU leader who succumbed to the crisis.
The Guardian claims that despite Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble denied he had advocated Greece’s exit from the euro zone, “contingency plans had been put in place by the time the EU’s elite flew into Cannes.” As reported in March 2012, the European Central Bank had drawn a road map of emergency measures to be taken in case the debt restructuring plan didn’t succeed. The measures included deposit freeze, bank withdrawals limited to 100 euros a week and capital controls.
The newspaper reveals that Venizelos when recounting the events still gets pale while he said that he was so upset that he became sick and was admitted to a hospital.
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